Ernesto Renda

We Other Vitruvians

2019

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We Other Vitruvians was a series that came both out of a trip to Florence and Venice and a year when I began going out to more drag performances in New York. As I was trying to figure out and complicate my relationship to a "gay" figurative painting, I was interested in the way a body succeeds or fails to play a role. In these frottages, there are two layers of image: One is the dramatic shape which acts a keyhole in the blank canvas through which you see my cast of drag queens and clones fail comically to fit into the holes. I drew indulgently and pleasurably on the color of Renaissance paintings I saw in Florence when I made these works.